


Not-So-Straight Shooter

by Carrieosity



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Coming Out, Competition, Culture Shock, Enemies to Friends, Guns, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, Male Friendship, Marksman Eric "Bitty" Bittle, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Skiier Jack Zimmerman, Skiing, Southern Culture, biathlon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 08:44:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11414331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrieosity/pseuds/Carrieosity
Summary: Bitty is a southern man, and therefore he knows guns. And, as it turns out, Bitty can SHOOT. His accuracy is incredible enough to almost make his daddy cry, and *almost* enough to make up for all the rest of the things that fuel his childhood bullies' aggressions.But only almost.And so he chooses a northern college, far from home - rural enough to feel familiar, but liberal enough that he doesn’t have to be so afraid anymore. Going to the woods on the weekends with the rifle he keeps in storage, shooting for targets until his fingers are numb, helps him with the lingering homesickness.He didn’t expect to be seen. He never expected to have his name shoved in front of the school biathlon coach, who has his hands full of great skiers but not so many crack-shots.His folks hadn’t been sure about sending their boy into Yankee territory, but when they hear he could get his degree for free just for firing a gun? They’re on board. But Bitty’s not sure about this whole skiing thing, especially when the team captain is scowling at him harder every time he falls.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> My first foray into the OMGCP fic world! Note: I'm in Wisconsin, but I grew up near West Virginia, so this is sort of familiar to me. On the other hand, I have very little personal background in either hunting or skiing, let alone biathlon. I'm a pretty good researcher, though, and this is really fascinating to me. If I screw up on any of the details, though, let me know!
> 
> Also, if hunting animals is a squick for you, don't worry; that part's pretty much a non-issue past this first chapter.

Mama and Aunt Judy were at it again.

In the interest of accuracy, “again” was sort of misleading. “Still” might have been a better descriptor. Perhaps it didn’t need to be said at all, really, since it was the usual state of things and had been since, Lord, nobody really knew for certain. The tightrope-over-a-minefield balance had definitely been in place at least by their third interaction, when, by horrible coincidence, both women had brought potato salad to the family Memorial Day barbecue. It had been a tense affair, to hear tell, with both women standing near the groaning table with icy polite smiles for anyone who approached—and taking carefully equal scoops of both dishes saved nobody from being added to the mental tallies of who was on “ _her_ side.”

The only person not to have been uncomfortable, apparently, had been MooMaw. The uncontested family matriarch had watched the standoff with a twinkle in her eye and had been heard remarking with pleasure about “spirited young ladies” who might “add a little fire” to the family blood.

But even MooMaw had to have been getting a little tired of it by now, twenty-some years later, obvious by how she’d chosen to cram herself onto a rickety picnic table bench among the younger grandchildren and great-grandchildren, messily coloring Easter eggs, rather than join the bigger gathering of women in the large kitchen for gossip disguised as brunch preparation. Other than the mothers of the tiniest tots in the group, nobody else was managing quite so blatant an escape, for fear of finding herself the newest subject of merciless discussion.

MooMaw looked up from her perch, casually using her apron to rub at wrinkled hands splattered with pink and purple dye, and peered through the screen door into the bright, crowded kitchen. Her eyes met the large, brown eyes of her grandson (nobody could accuse MooMaw of playing favorites, not and _live,_ but there was an undeniably special connection between the two of them) and winked.

Eric smiled back weakly.

Despite the comfort he usually took in the solace of flour-coated hands, he wished he could get away with being out there now, coloring eggs with the little ones instead of being in here, but there was no hope for it. He was far too old to participate as a child, but participating in a supervisory role had gotten him teased in the past. Maybe if he’d had a little brother or sister whom he could have played at needing to guide, it wouldn’t have been seen as strange, but he was an only child, and he was only a few months away from leaving behind the last trappings of childhood he had remaining. Graduating from high school would push him the final steps away from what little latitude he was granted as a “goofy kid”; he’d be one of the Bittle Men, nevermind that he’d probably continue to bear the nickname “Junior” even past that dubious promotion. He’d been to funerals for octogenarians, for which the eulogies bid fond farewells to “Little Billy,” “Scooter,” or “PeeWee.”

Bittle Men didn’t hang out in the kitchen with the women. At the moment, the Bittle Men were primarily occupied with arguing the upcoming football draft predictions, lamenting or rejoicing over the current rankings of various auto racers, and the requisite appreciation of Uncle Jim’s newest hunting dog, which looked exactly like the last three he’d had. Eric could appreciate the dog, at least, though he had to make conscious effort to refrain from any careless baby-talking when petting him. Bittle Men didn’t baby-talk.

Bittle Men didn’t do a lot of things.

Particularly, they didn’t hang out in the kitchen with the women, even if they had a couple of pies in the oven that needed to be watched. Of course, they wouldn’t have been making pies in the first place, even if said pies were county fair champions and some of the best pies anybody present had ever tasted (second to those from MooMaw herself, who had guided the development of these successors). It didn’t need to make sense; he’d been getting increasingly significant looks from his dad over the last couple of years, and now even the women were starting to make oblique statements about how grateful they were for “all his help” when they were sure he’d be much rather be outside with the other young men.

It was that sort of thing that made it pointless to resist, anyway. Apart from the satisfaction of the actual baking, the entire draw of being in the kitchen in the first place had been the way it allowed him a sort of invisibility. A sweet little boy, shadowing his mama as he rolled out pastry dough, was more adorable scenery than actual person, and nobody needed to figure out scenery. It just _was._ With the other cousins, it was always impossible to escape comparisons between himself and the other boys his age—so much bigger, so much rougher, so much more what his father had anticipated from the day Mama had coyly handed him a giftwrapped infant sleeper printed with footballs and the words “DADDY’S LITTLE QUARTERBACK.” As they had all gotten older, the differences became even more pronounced. Homecoming and prom seasons, with all the ensuing talk (and ribald eyebrow-waggling from more than a few of the older men) about dates and dancing, had been so profoundly awkward for Eric that he’d actually spent nearly the entire afternoon of a Sunday brunch picnic hiding in the cab of the truck with his earbuds jammed deep in his ears, letting Beyonce soothe his nerves.

And now he was back to being awkwardly visible again, which left him vulnerable to the same sort of artless prying that was the reason none of the other women had dared flee the passive-aggressive war zone surrounding Mama and Aunt Judy. The kitchen had never been _quiet_ before, it was true, but now the noise was reaching him, gripping him, and his brain buzzed uncomfortably under the stress, demanding an escape.

“Eric Richard Bittle, I swear, you’ve grown half a foot since I last looked at you. Bet you make all the girls blush now, don’t you?” Aunt Rosemarie, halfway to shouting in her refusal to wear hearing aids, grinned wickedly at him. The loudness of her speech wasn’t the biggest part of what made him wince. “Gonna break any hearts when you head off to college in a couple years?”

“Our Dicky graduates this year,” Mama corrected proudly, saving Eric from having to lie to answer the question in a way that wouldn’t give the old lady the vapors. For a moment, he let himself imagine what it would be like to say the hell with it, just come screaming out of the closet in the middle of the Easter barbecue. It would certainly cut down on the need for the gossip train. Maybe he could make a game of it, paint “Eric Bittle likes boys!” on a few of the eggs to be used in the hunt.

“Oh, that’s nice. My Rebecca’s girl graduates this year, too. Heading to Tech, got herself a scholarship. How about you, Dicky? You going to Georgia State like your mom? Or you gonna stay closer to home and be a regular Bulldog?”

Eric didn’t miss his mother’s sudden grimace as she turned to grab a dishcloth and swipe at the already clean counter. “Actually, I’m going out of state,” he said, imagining that the kitchen got a little quieter. “I…I wanted to try someplace little bit _different,_ go someplace…” _Away from here._ “…new.”

Aunt Rosemarie frowned, shaking her head. “Don’t see why. My Georgie’s youngest boy went to Auburn, said the same thing about ‘new,’ but I’m sure I didn’t see the point in paying out-of-state for that. It’s all the same schooling, I say. You kids all want to be independent, but the sacks of laundry you haul home on the weekends say something else.” She snorted at her own joke.

“Well, that would be a heck of a long drive for laundry,” Mama said wryly, catching his eye. She was still upset about this, though the tears shed the night he’d told his parents were long dry, and she said she understood. She didn’t, really; she couldn’t, not when Eric hadn’t ever confessed the weight of all the reasons he needed to leave. What she did understand was how poorly he fit in around here, which was a difficult thing to deny even without knowing the details. “Almost fourteen hours by car to Wisconsin.”

_“Wisconsin?”_ Half the women in the kitchen, who’d been listening to the conversation as they pretended to work, gasped; the others turned to see what they’d missed. Aunt Rosemarie looked bewildered. “That’s almost to Canada! You’ll freeze your toes off, boy! What does your daddy think about this?”

Eric shrugged. “Lot of deer up there,” he answered. “He just said to make sure and bag him a Wisconsin trophy buck.”

\---

He didn’t have a _bad_ relationship with his dad, really; it could have been much worse, all things considered. It was just that they didn’t have a _close_ relationship. Eric loved his dad, and he knew his dad loved him. They just didn’t really get each other.

Eric had tried, so many times, to be the son he knew his dad had, if not wanted, at least expected. He’d dressed in flannel and camouflage, feeling like he was in costume. He’d learned the rules of football, and he’d sat through televised games and the high school ones his father coached, even after it had become clear that his body was never going to grow enough to be anybody’s “little quarterback.”  He’d tried other sports, then, and his father had come to cheer for him in baseball, basketball, dirtbike racing. Nothing stuck, but his dad had been supportive and encouraging, studying up on how Eric could be the best damn competitor at whatever he wound up doing, if it wasn’t football. When Eric nicknamed him “Coach,” calling him by that name more naturally than he used “Dad,” it was probably the truest thing he could have called him.

But in the end, Eric hadn’t enjoyed any of those things, and he decided he simply wasn’t meant for athletics at all. His dad, who really just wanted him to be happy even if he couldn’t see exactly what was going wrong, didn’t argue when Eric didn’t go out for any teams at all after his junior year. He did, though, quietly regret the loss of that time they’d been spending together.

There was one thing they shared, though. It was as basic, as fundamental to them both as being male or being Southern, though it was rooted in those things.

“Get your bag, Junior. We’re about ready to head out.”

“Yessir, Coach. Just give me a minute.”

The tables were still full of food, and it would probably be at least another hour before anybody even thought about starting the clean-up, but whenever more than a handful of Bittle Men got together, it was expected that at some point or another, the exact time depending on the particular season they were in, there would come polite excuses, followed by a small caravan of pickup trucks heading off to Broad River, Hartwell, or some other public hunting area. It was as expected as an altar call; the only variation was the lull between seasons, when the rifles were replaced with fly rods.

It was sort of funny, Eric mused to himself, that it was in this, arguably the most stereotypically Country Boy activity that the Bittle Men enjoyed, that he actually felt more comfortable than in anything else they did. That probably had a lot to do with the fact that he was really, really _good_ at it. There hadn’t ever been a question that he would be included, from the time he was presented with his first Remington compact youth shotgun for his ninth Christmas, just like his daddy and his grandpappy before him; Eric had taken his first pheasant just after the New Year, a perfectly-placed shot that folded the bird before it could think of taking flight. Coach had almost cried.

“Lucky shot,” one of Eric’s older cousins, who was fourteen and still hadn’t successfully bagged so much as a dove, had muttered. It hadn’t been. Amazingly, the boy who was awkward in every other respect made up for it by being able to hit pretty much anything at which he pointed his gun. He couldn’t help but feel pretty good about that. He wasn’t so big on the actual killing aspect (the framed photo on the family room wall, Eric with his first buck, showed a flushed young man attempting to avoid the vacant, glassy eyes of the eight-pointer lying beside him), but that was okay. The approval on the faces of the men around him, so new for him, was more than enough reward for him, and his reputation was _almost_ enough to make up for all those other things that had the bullies eyeing him like fresh meat whenever he walked into school.

Almost, anyway.

The handful of trucks bumped their way down the back roads, further away from town. Eric was wedged in Uncle Jim’s cab between the new dog and Uncle Dougie’s old wire-haired pointer that was so deaf that he could only do hunts if he followed another dog. The two of them panted hot breath in Eric’s ears while he idly scratched them on the backs of their necks. Uncle Jim didn’t say much, already slipping into the silence they’d all have to keep while they waited for the sound of turkeys gobbling through the brush. That suited Eric fine. The quiet of the woods was the other major blessing he took from this.

Several hours later, standing near the three large toms now piled in the truck beds and ready to take home, Eric let Coach handle the teasing that had begun in response to the same news that had shocked the women in his family. “Sending the boy up into Yankee territory! Don’t that count as child endangerment?” They all laughed, enjoying the joke.

Eric laughed, too. So long as it was funny, nobody was really arguing or thinking about it too hard.

“At least you won’t have to worry about driving to Wisconsin games,” Uncle Dougie chuckled. “One good thing about Junior not playing ball, after all.”

“S’pose so,” Coach said mildly. He looked at Eric for a moment, and there was a strange expression in his eye. _Disappointed in me again._ The familiar heat of shame curled in Eric’s belly, and he glanced away. When he looked back, his father was frowning up at the sky. “Almost dusk,” he said. “Better get back. Good hunt, though. Maybe we can get in a couple more before season ends, if we try.”

And then it would be summer, and the next big season, deer, wouldn’t start up again until after Eric was gone. That…ached more than he’d thought it would.

\---

The passage of time was marked by gatherings. After Easter came Memorial Day, and then graduation. MooMaw had cornered Eric at the celebration picnic, settling down beside him under the shady elm where he’d taken refuge from the noise and the attention. They’d sat quietly together for a bit, just watching the hubbub of the party in front of them, resting from the strain of being in the middle of it. Finally, she’d turned and smiled at him—a little, knowing smile.

She’d given him a box of letter-writing supplies, along with a gorgeous fountain pen, as a graduation gift. The message had been clear.

“Won’t be the same without you,” she said. “But I know you got to get out there. You’ll do big things, and you make sure to write ‘em all down, so’s I don’t have to drive up there myself to make sure you’re okay.”

“Might wish you could,” he admitted, feeling homesick already at the thought.

“If you need me to, I will,” she promised. “Or I’ll make your daddy drive me, anyway. But you’ll be just fine. And we’ll still be here if you need us.”

Then it was July (weekends of fly fishing), and then August (the doves and marsh hens Eric spied were fattening nicely), and then the truck was full of bags and boxes and Mama and Coach were driving north with him, stopping near St. Louis to rest and so Mama could take their pictures by the big Arch over the Mississippi River.

One of those pictures wound up thumbtacked to the corkboard hanging over the campus-supplied desk in Eric’s new dorm room. He stood staring at it, at the cheerful smiles on his parents’ faces as they waved at the camera—held by a helpful tourist—and his brain struggled to process that it _wasn’t_ a vacation photo. It was a goodbye. Mama squeezed his shoulder.

Hugging them goodbye, he felt numb. Mama cried, and Coach looked uncertain and fidgety, patting her back. They’d left before dinner, wanting to cover miles before dark, and then…

Then he was alone.

And it was the strangest feeling in the world.

_I wanted this,_ he thought. _I wanted to be away from all the questions and the prying. I wanted to be somewhere nobody thought they knew me, and here I am._

_What now?_

The noise of the students throughout the dorm, laughing and chattering as they unpacked, might have come from a million miles away, for all that it didn’t touch him. He looked at the photo, and he looked out the window at the bustling sidewalks, and he felt completely lost about how to begin.


	2. Muzzle Energy

_ I don’t really think it’s that I’m homesick yet. It’s just that everything here is so different, and it’s different in ways I didn’t expect. I mean, there’s all the things that go without saying—you can’t get a decent bowl of grits, everybody’s in a hurry, and it’s already a good ten degrees colder here than it should be, but folks are running around in flip-flops and muscle shirts. I’m shivering in my sweatshirt, and I’d be lying if I said I’m not sort of scared of what actual winter is going to be like.  _

_ But those aren’t the surprising things. Everybody told me how northern people would be so much ruder and colder than folks back home, but that’s not really true at all. Maybe it’s the midwest thing, but they’re all really, really friendly. And it’s weird, because you’d think I’d know how to handle that. Guess not. _

Eric frowned at the letter he was writing, tapping the pen against his lips. He didn’t know how to explain what he was trying to say; it was only because the letter was for MooMaw that he was saying anything at all. She already knew how his mind worked, how sometimes he just needed to be quiet, inside and out, or he’d feel like he was helplessly flying apart.

Even so, it wouldn’t be exactly  _ nice _ to tell somebody that one of the bigger problems with people in your own family is how they just won’t leave you alone. Some things, you don’t say out loud, even if they’re already understood. That was just being polite. Funny how writing a letter longhand seemed to pull out deeper thoughts; texting definitely made it easier to keep things at the surface level, but the idea of trying to communicate with MooMaw using emojis and casual internet slang made him snort a laugh.

The other students, the teachers, and everybody else he’d met over the past month had indeed been very nice to him. The smiles had all seemed genuine, and he didn’t even mind the good-natured teasing about his drawl, the way he’d lost count of how many times he’d been begged to “Just say ‘y’all’! C’mon, one time!” But there were so many of them around, all the time, and unlike the family members back home, eternally prying into personal details just because they felt like they had a God-given right to do it, most of these new acquaintances seemed to be genuinely interested in getting to know him—like, deeply invested in it, for some reason.

Could be that it was only his perception. It might have something to do with how he was firmly in the habit of holding back the more personal parts of himself, even when it was no longer completely necessary. He didn’t really have any reason to think that this group of classmates would be anything like the ones at his high school. Eric  _ wanted  _ to make connections with his new classmates. He just couldn’t make himself relax and go for it.

And, God love them, they kept trying. Weekday afternoons, when his roommate was at marching band practice, were almost the only opportunities he had to escape the constant social barrage that thrummed noisily about him wherever he went. It was  _ exhausting.  _

Eric knew he needed to keep trying, though. Eventually, maybe, it would stop being so hard.  _ It has to, right? _ He’d accepted invitations to a few parties, and he’d had a good time, he guessed, once he’d learned to avoid getting trapped in tight corners by crushes of large upperclassmen. There was an LGBT campus center that apparently hosted frequent social events, and he’d mustered up the courage to go to their kickoff barbecue, lurking quietly on the fringes of activity. That group of partygoers, mercifully, had been the exception to the overly friendly trend, apparently being sensitive to his need to remain passively apart, at least for now. One older student, the lower half of his face obscured by a long mustache that even Eric’s uncles might have admired, had brought him a drink and smiled at him, but had left their interaction at that.

Eric sighed, thinking about how different and overwhelming the rest of his life felt in contrast. He had a large pile of books and notebooks perched and leaning precariously on the edge of his desk; just looking at it reminded him of the two papers coming due soon, along with the biology test next week that he’d probably fail without a lot more studying than he felt emotionally able to entertain. He’d been living off granola bars and beef jerky, even though the student kitchens were available to use, because every time he peeked in there, he discovered herds of students worshipping at the twin shrines of Pillsbury and Duncan Hines. Eric wasn’t quite desperate to wait until two in the morning to bake in an empty kitchen, but it didn’t sound as farfetched as it might have a few weeks ago. 

It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon now. He figured he had about another hour before his roommate would whirl into the room, flushed and sweaty from hours of marching, and attempt to drag Eric out for dinner with the trumpet section again. His nerves felt twitchy already, anticipating, and he made the abrupt decision to be elsewhere. With that thought came the obvious answer. There was a bus route, he knew; he’d looked it up a few weeks after he’d arrived, when part of him knew he’d end up needing it. He grabbed his jacket, wallet, and keys, and practically ran.

On the way to the bus, he stopped by the storage unit Coach had set up for him in town.

_ “There’s a couple decent pieces of public land not too far from here,” Coach said as he scrawled his information on the piece of paper the clerk had given him, “and you never know when you might get a morning to yourself. Be easier if you could just keep your stuff in your room, of course.” The unit was the size of a closet, but it only needed to hold a couple of things. _

_ “Sure, because nobody gets twitchy about firearms in student dorms,” Eric murmured, rolling his eyes. “Even Georgia doesn’t allow it.” _

_ Coach pursed his lips. “Well, I guess I remember the sort of shenanigans college kids get up to. S’pose it’s a good idea to keep your gun away from any drunk idiots in your hall.” _

It was a long ride out to Cherokee Marsh, the closest hunting ground, but the bus was peaceful. Eric rested his feet on the hard shotgun case, daydreaming as he watched the scenery slide past through the window. He was almost surprised at how fast the time flew, before he was climbing out of the bus and squinting up at the sky to figure how many hours of daylight he had available to him. Everything else was just details.

He ignored the signs about what types of wildlife were available to hunt and in what limits; that wasn’t what he needed right now. It was the quiet of the woods he wanted, the familiar weight of the rifle in his arms, and the gratification of the  _ crack _ as his finger squeezed the trigger. It was seeing the target fly up, spinning from the impact. Eric had a bag of soda cans, originally headed for recycling; this was a sort of recycling, he thought.

An open clearing about fifty yards across, with a couple of stumps near one side, was tailor-made for his purpose. Judging from the handful of spent shells someone had neglected to pick up, he wasn’t the first person to use it like this. Feelings of eagerness spurred him to hurry as he unpacked his gear and set up the first line of cans, and he forced himself to slow down and be as methodical as he had been taught. Finally, with protective guards over his ears muffling the noise around him, Eric lifted his rifle and sent the cans spinning.

\---

That first visit to Cherokee Marsh took every bit of daylight and all the bullets in his bag before the exhaustion and satisfaction had blanketed his jangling nerves, leaving him wrung out and smoothed down. His arms were vibrating slightly, but that was from the repeated recoil of the gun, not his worries or stress. By the time he rode back, he was almost falling asleep on the dark and mostly empty bus, and it was a good thing he was sitting near enough to the front that the driver was able to rouse him at his stop.

“Hope you don’t have an early class, young man,” he said, watching Eric stumble down the steps to the sidewalk. Eric did, but he usually drowsed his way through most of it, anyway. 

The next morning, his shoulders screamed at him when he stretched. His roommate laughed at the sound of his groan from across the room. “Rough night?” he asked, yawning around his grin. “You weren’t out late enough to have been partying that hard.”

Eric just grunted and shook his head. If he let the assumption go, maybe he’d escape future pity invitations.

After that cathartic trip, now having an established workable solution in his pocket, he got a little more proactive about not letting things get so bad that he needed to destroy himself to make it better. Going out to the woods for a couple of hours every weekend or so was enough to take the edge off the worst of his anxiety, making everything else a bit more tolerable. He even worked it into his other routines as a reward: two hours of studying was a new box of the good ammunition, an A on that exam was a better and warmer pair of shooting gloves. Those woods were getting chillier every week.

The bus driver, seeing Eric making the trip on a regular basis, helped him get a frequent rider’s pass, and he asked polite questions about the hunting “down south.” He suggested a few other hunting areas, not too far away, that would be good to explore in the future, when Eric had his own vehicle and maybe an off-campus house so he could process whatever he might shoot. “I mean, you wouldn’t want to try that in an apartment building, with lots of coeds all over the place,” the man acknowledged with a wink. Eric had no intention of trying it at all, but he thanked him for the advice anyway. After all, certain assumptions were going to be made, based on appearances, and he’d been the target of far worse ones than this.

His chronic tension couldn’t handle all the soda he needed in order to have a stockpile of cans for targets, so he switched to using whatever interesting items he saw lying around the student dumpsters that didn’t look unsanitary. One week, he found a box of old ripped-up tennis balls; another time, he grabbed a pile of discarded notebooks. On one memorable outing, he laughed himself giddy using buckshot to shoot up a line of toy Army Men that some student had decided he didn’t need and had tossed into the garbage.

The box of wafer cookies had been a mystery—students would eat anything, he’d come to believe, no matter how shudder-worthy it happened to be—until he noticed that the “sell by” date was over a year past. They were certainly stale, but they weren’t moldy, so Eric decided they’d be fine for the birds to pick at when he was done. He set them up on the stumps, propping one against another so he could see them standing. Difficult shooting for the distance, but he’d done harder.

He became so focused on his aim that he didn’t notice the set of eyes watching him, first curious and then wide with incredulity. The ear guards he wore muffled the sound of the muttered “Holy shit,” and his own humming obscured the eventual crackling of dry leaves underfoot as the watcher left quietly in the direction from which he had arrived, heading back toward the group he’d left hanging out by the creek when they’d all heard the sound of the rifle shots not too far distant.

“No worries, we’re not under attack,” the witness said, settling himself down cross-legged on the dirt and holding out a hand for the sweet-smelling pipe being passed nearby. Taking a long drag and exhaling a ring into the air, he grinned and puffed out his long moustache. “But, gentlemen, you are not going to believe what I just witnessed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me about all this over on [Tumblr](http://carrieosity.tumblr.com).


End file.
